Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

BSI is technically a non-profit with a royal charter. They probably rely on those documents as their main funding source.

[Max™]

Hmmm, I wonder why it would bother people to have something like this behind a paywall, charging for the hardcopy is fine, you gotta pay to make more of those, but charging the same amount for a pdf? That does not inspire much confidence in the understanding of technological realities, as someone who didn't grow up seeing the kitemark and associating it with quality.

[Reelya]

Well you could say the same about ebooks and films: why charge for digital, when digitial is "free". That misses the point: physical printing costs are a drop in the ocean compared to creating the content itself.

As for BSI, they're a non-profit which chews through 300 million pounds a year and has 3,500 employees. Almost all that money would be spent on wages and maintaining the work environments for all those workers (it's about 80,000 pounds per worker). So they've got expenses on the scale of a movie studio. And the product they make is for a niche market. Hence, they must charge a lot more than a movie studio would charge.

[Loud Whispers]

Ptw space elevator thread

TO
THE
SKIES
AND
THEN
A
LITTLE
BIT
BEYOND

[Max™]

Well you could say the same about ebooks and films: why charge for digital, when digitial is "free". That misses the point: physical printing costs are a drop in the ocean compared to creating the content itself.

As for BSI, they're a non-profit which chews through 300 million pounds a year and has 3,500 employees. Almost all that money would be spent on wages and maintaining the work environments for all those workers (it's about 80,000 pounds per worker). So they've got expenses on the scale of a movie studio. And the product they make is for a niche market. Hence, they must charge a lot more than a movie studio would charge.

Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do. Having a set of standards which can wind up encoded within a legal framework and charging for them feels weird enough but I can understand operating costs and such, charging the same amount for a digital and physical copy is a step or so further down the weird scale.

[Starver]

Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do.

What's that you say? You mean I won't always have my revenge, in this life or in Paris?

[Max™]

If you don't get on this blade, Ilsa, you'll regret it if you are not entertained!

[Reelya]

Well you could say the same about ebooks and films: why charge for digital, when digitial is "free". That misses the point: physical printing costs are a drop in the ocean compared to creating the content itself.

As for BSI, they're a non-profit which chews through 300 million pounds a year and has 3,500 employees. Almost all that money would be spent on wages and maintaining the work environments for all those workers (it's about 80,000 pounds per worker). So they've got expenses on the scale of a movie studio. And the product they make is for a niche market. Hence, they must charge a lot more than a movie studio would charge.

Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do. Having a set of standards which can wind up encoded within a legal framework and charging for them feels weird enough but I can understand operating costs and such, charging the same amount for a digital and physical copy is a step or so further down the weird scale.

Without funding the specs wouldn't exist in the first place. And it's only $200 ffs. The only people who can't afford something like that are unemployed students, and they have no real reason to get an insider preview on robotic ethics.

[alexandertnt]

I don't even know if we need an ethical standard IMO. To me, a robot is just a tool, and all the same ethics would apply. e.g. someone building and using a robot to kill is just someone building a homemade weapon to kill. A malfunction robot that injures someone is just a faulty tool. If it's found to be the result of gross negligence on behalf of the creators, I would expect the creators to be charged with manslaughter. It it's the result of abuse/neglect/unreasonable-use/modification by the owner, it would be the owners fault.

It seems reasonable there would be some legal regulations concerning the construction/sale/etc of robots though (like there are with specific tools/weapons etc.)

[Sheb]

Would this fit here? There is a growing effort for expanding the Montreal protocol to remove HFCs, the replacement of CFCs that aren't damaging to the ozone layer, but still are extremely powerful greenhouse gases.

[i2amroy]

I don't even know if we need an ethical standard IMO. To me, a robot is just a tool, and all the same ethics would apply. e.g. someone building and using a robot to kill is just someone building a homemade weapon to kill. A malfunction robot that injures someone is just a faulty tool. If it's found to be the result of gross negligence on behalf of the creators, I would expect the creators to be charged with manslaughter. It it's the result of abuse/neglect/unreasonable-use/modification by the owner, it would be the owners fault.

It seems reasonable there would be some legal regulations concerning the construction/sale/etc of robots though (like there are with specific tools/weapons etc.)

I'm with you, though there's lots of fuzziness with "learning algorithms" that gets introduced, such as the example from a few years ago where someone wrote up an algorithm that trawled the internet and bought random things. The programmer obviously didn't intend for it to gain possession of illegal drugs, but when it did the idea of who was responsible for that fact became kinda important. (The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer).

[Starver]

(The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer).

"Free the PC 0x01!"

[Reelya]

They probably used civil forfeiture rules for that. For robots being things basically the American police could take possession of them with very little oversight. See this John Oliver episode on civil forfeiture for some examples. Gotta love how John Oliver adds dark humor to all these horrible topics.

In many states American police can legally shake you down for cash, cars, even your house, and then you have to appeal and prove your stuff was innocent - guilt is automatically assumed based on the cop's "gut feeling" rather than evidence. And the appeal is to the same department benefiting from the assets.

 And what are they allowed to do with the stuff they confiscate? Basically, anything they want. So the same cop who randomly decided to take your car (the police have been known to drop drug bags through windows, then "find" the drugs and confiscate the vehicle - always wind windows up) could be driving around in it as an "undercover" vehicle permanently assign to him. Or they take cash off someone who was going to buy a car (on the basis that you might be planning to buy drugs, because you have money), then they spend it on keg parties for the police.

[Criptfeind]

I don't even know if we need an ethical standard IMO. To me, a robot is just a tool, and all the same ethics would apply. e.g. someone building and using a robot to kill is just someone building a homemade weapon to kill. A malfunction robot that injures someone is just a faulty tool. If it's found to be the result of gross negligence on behalf of the creators, I would expect the creators to be charged with manslaughter. It it's the result of abuse/neglect/unreasonable-use/modification by the owner, it would be the owners fault.

It seems reasonable there would be some legal regulations concerning the construction/sale/etc of robots though (like there are with specific tools/weapons etc.)

I'm with you, though there's lots of fuzziness with "learning algorithms" that gets introduced, such as the example from a few years ago where someone wrote up an algorithm that trawled the internet and bought random things. The programmer obviously didn't intend for it to gain possession of illegal drugs, but when it did the idea of who was responsible for that fact became kinda important. (The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer).

If I remember this story correctly (and if I'm indeed thinking of the same thing you are) the bot was specifically suppose to trawl though some sketchy shit, it wasn't just randomly browsing amazon. I'm sure the artists knew that it'd have a fair chance of buying some illegal stuff.

They probably used civil forfeiture rules for that. For robots being things basically the American police could take possession of them with very little oversight. See this John Oliver episode on civil forfeiture for some examples. Gotta love how John Oliver adds dark humor to all these horrible topics.

In many states American police can legally shake you down for cash, cars, even your house, and then you have to appeal and prove your stuff was innocent - guilt is automatically assumed based on the cop's "gut feeling" rather than evidence. And what are they allowed to do with the stuff they confiscate? Basically, anything they want. So the same cop who randomly decided to take your car (the police have been known to drop drug bags through windows, then "find" the drugs and confiscate the vehicle - always wind windows up) could be driving around in it as an "undercover" vehicle permanently assign to him. Or they take cash off someone who was going to buy a car (on the basis that you might be planning to buy drugs, because you have money), then they spend it on keg parties for the police.

I don't know what their forfeiture laws are like (probably better then the US though). But I think this event happened in switzerland. Also I think that eventually they got their computer back.

[Aklyon]

Did they get the computer back intact, wiped, or as parts?